The Aetherfae (13 page)

THIRTEEN

LESSONS

R
onnie and Candace wanted to go with me, but I wouldn’t let them. With instructions to disappear into Manhattan if I wasn’t back by sunrise, they reluctantly let me leave. Clad in black leather pants, black boots, and a matching jacket, I felt stupid crossing the lounge on the first floor of the hotel. The night air was cool but smelled of diesel exhaust—not a smell I was used to. The sounds of buses and cars stopping and starting, of tires on uneven pavement, and a distant siren filled my ears.

After thirty minutes of waiting, the valet appeared with the car we’d rented. I plugged the address into the navigation system and waited for the route to confirm, dryness filling my mouth again. This part of the city was nothing but an expanse of pavement and buildings that all looked the same, block after block. I crossed a bridge that was tall enough to see Manhattan gleaming to my right, and then descended back into a concrete and brick valley, with views of nothing but grimy streets. The computerized voice led me through a nicer residential area of row houses, lined up side by side for blocks, punctuated by corner stores. At four in the morning, there were only a few people milling about on the sidewalks.

The bright voice told me to turn left on Third. I passed under an elevated road and followed Third Avenue south to an area of anonymous four and five story buildings and large vacant parking lots. The happy voice directed me to turn right, away from the light traffic on Third Street and into an area with a handful of parked cars. The building on my left looked abandoned—a massive, filthy concrete facade, seven or eight stories tall, with rows of large broken windows all set behind a chain link fence. My mouth felt as dry as baked dirt
. “
Oh my gosh, what a freaking nightmare. I can’t do this.”
You have no choice. You can do it.

When my eyes closed, I started shaking. “Breathe,” I commanded. My chest tightened around my lungs and my stomach folded. “Oh god…” I moaned. Each breath came a little harder, and I couldn’t seem to calm down enough to project.
Move. I need to move.

Gingerly, I opened the car door and forced my feet onto the pavement. Spreading my mind, I felt a few cars passing on the elevated road behind me, and fewer on Third Avenue. A ship of some kind churned south in the dark harbor, and beyond it, there were cars navigating some distant street. I closed my eyes and managed to project just a few feet above my body. I concentrated on the building, floating through the shadowy space from one dark room to the next. There were rats, garbage, and pieces of broken and abandoned equipment, but no people.

Then I did it—I concentrated on Mara. I found her, uncloaked, standing atop a building, staring at the Manhattan skyline. She smiled and cloaked herself. Just a few miles away from me, she was closer than I thought she’d be. My heart skipped a beat. I dropped the connection and sprinted toward the building, blowing a hole in the fence before I got to it. My invisible fingers tore a wide gap in a large window, and I leapt inside. My eyes slowly adjusted to the large room while my heart continued to race. I sat down and projected again. She lingered a thousand yards from where I waited. Then she turned and began moving north, away from me.

She headed back the way I’d just come.
Candace, Ronnie…
my mind cried.

With my mind cruising along beside her, I concentrated on a few words. “Afraid to face me. Coward. Just like that leech, Naji.”

I heard her screech with my physical ears, and made it back to my body just before she drifted onto the top floor.
What is she waiting on? She’s wondering if I’m really alone, isn’t she.
I screamed at the top of my lungs, “I’m here, all alone. Come get me!”

I channeled the essence of all four elements, and spread my mind again. She was cloaked.
Two can play at that game.
I wrapped Clóca around myself, and moved to the center of the space. My gut told me to move, quickly, out of the room. I sprinted away toward a broad opening and into another room as the ceiling began to crumble above where I’d just been. Huge pieces of concrete fell behind me, whipping up a cloud of dust. A strip of electric conduit spun wildly, missing my barrier by a few inches. I concentrated and felt the source of the energy, just like Wakinyan had. My legs trembled.

All grew quiet again and she disappeared. Across the massive room, several hundred feet away, I pushed debris across the floor. I felt her again, only two floors above me. Deafened by a crashing sound, a huge steel I-beam sliced through the ceiling and sank several feet into the concrete through the middle of an old folding chair I’d just moved. The “whoosh” sound of blood pumping in my ears replaced the noise of rubble clattering across the concrete.

Still further away, next to the window I’d flown through, I scooted a pile of loose paper with my mind. From just a floor above me, I felt her connect with the glass panes. Razor-sharp shards swirled in an expanding balloon, then shot across the room in all directions, snapping and exploding into dust on every surface.

For several seconds, all I could hear was my breathing. Her cold voice cut through the darkness. “
Hülye gyerek, you did come by yourself after all.”

I said nothing.

“Afraid to answer me? Ha-ha, you should be. You are szegény kis halott kislány—a poor little dead girl. I wonder, will you pray for death before I give it to you?”

My entire body quaked, but I still didn’t utter a sound.

The air around me swirled, blowing the dust into a vortex. It cascaded off my barrier, but the floor buckled beneath me, thrusting me several feet into the air. I landed on my back, staring at the ceiling some thirty feet above. I deflected huge chunks of concrete that rained down on top of me. My mind reached to where she stood, and I grasped her body and yanked her toward the opening. She spun out of my grip and cloaked.
That didn’t work.

I blew the debris across the room, and stood. A piece of steel shot in my direction, I didn’t see it, but I felt it. Instinctively, I tried to deflect, but she forced it past my barrier. It glanced off my left arm, as I hurled myself in the opposite direction, splaying out on chunks of concrete. The snap in my arm echoed in my head, but I didn’t feel pain at first. My entire arm felt numb and wet. I rolled over and tried to stand, but I couldn’t. She pinned me back, forcing the air out of my chest.

Panic heightened my senses to the point I was seeing things that weren’t really there.

She released her grip on my chest and I swallowed gulps of air. The numbness in my arm quickly turned to throbbing pain when she pressed down on the break, twisting it. As I screamed, I managed to focus just enough to create Clóca, severing her hold on me, but I struggled to maintain it. In fact, I was fighting to main control of any of the elements—I’d never fought through this kind of pain before.
Don’t pass out
.

As I stumbled to my feet, losing the barrier each time I moved my arm, I watched her. Her limbs grew long and thin, bending unnaturally. Like a spider, she crawled through the opening above me and across the ceiling, twisting her gray face around backwards to face me. Across the ceiling, to a wall, she kept trying to break through my shield.

I had to sit when I felt light-headed, and despite the pain, I pulled my arm up and cradled it. I screamed again, struggling to keep her invisible hands off of me. Concentrating on my breathing, I watched her unfurl herself into a standing position when she reached the floor. She pressed harder against my barrier and began closing the distance, nothing but malice on her face.

At twenty feet, I sent my mind into the floor and snapped two huge slabs of concrete around her, they stopped a foot apart. I pressed them together with as much force as I could, but she pushed against me before obliterating them into a cascade of dust and sand. The moment she emerged, I tried Quint. Each orange finger of energy bounced off a finger of Clóca. She felt each angle and countered.

Faster than I could see, she launched her body against my Clóca. It held, but she pushed a sinewy arm through it and hissed. I countered, blocking her. She plunged her other arm, and again I felt it penetrate. Each time pushed, she got closer, compressing my barrier smaller and smaller. In my mind, I recognized she was using Clóca to beat me.

Panic gripped me as her blows came faster and faster. She moved so fast that my mind simply stopped working. I just lay there like a rabbit being dug out of a burrow. She was stronger with Air. Fire didn’t work, Earth didn’t work, and we were too far away from the Water to try a wave.

The moment her claws scratched through and sunk into my shattered arm, both barriers failed. I tried not to scream, but like my barrier, I failed. She pressed fear into my mind and I couldn’t feel my body. I was helpless. She glared into my eyes as I waited for her to slice through my neck like she did with her other victims.

“Oh no, Halott lány, that would be too fast.”

Mara unhinged her jaw and hissed putrid breath and spittle across my face. The wetness on my skin snapped something in my mind. She sank her head towards my neck. I expected a stabbing pain, but felt only slight pressure. Instinctually, before I recognized what I was doing, I’d connected to the water in her body and froze it. She rocked back and tried to cut off my connection as her blood turned to slush in her arms and legs. We struggled for control as I forced my mind further into her body. Yanking her arms spastically, she tried to roll off of me, but I grabbed a hand full of mousy gray hair with my good hand and yanked her back.
Stay physically connected,
my mind commanded.

She screamed both verbally and mentally, and I thought my head would explode. The high-pitched screech dropped in frequency a few seconds later. After one last gurgle, only her mental howls remained. An oven-sized lump of concrete lifted off the floor a few feet away, but I severed her connection to it. Her wild red eyes flashed back to mine. I snarled, “Not today, leech!”

I wrapped my legs around her seizing body until she stopped moving. She felt colder than ice to the touch, but she was still struggling. “Why aren’t you dead,” I screamed.

I pulled her claws out of my arm and yelled in her face, “Die already!”

The last discernible movement came when she fixed her stare on me. Frozen solid and helpless, I felt her mind reaching out, struggling to connect to Air. “Too late for that,” I growled an inch from her face.

Her mental scream filled my head.

“Oh, I’m sorry, does it hurt?”

“Let me go, filth.”

“
Wrong answer.”

I concentrated on every drop of water I could sense and pulled it out of her body, pooling it on the floor around us. The mental shriek filled my head once again, and I pulled harder. Her smooth gray skin wrinkled and sunk, and I felt her desperation. Concrete and debris scuttled across the floor and dust began swirling in the air, but I kept draining her moisture until her beady red eyes shrank to raisins and disappeared in empty black sockets. The massive room went calm. Mara popped out of existence a second later.

“Oh my god, I’m still alive,” I cried into the empty room.

The muscles in my stomach quaked with fatigue until I relaxed back into a pile of sharp debris. The pain came in hot waves, churning my stomach. With my lips clenched between my teeth, I tried not to jostle my arm. I was afraid I’d pass out if I moved too much, but I had to get off the floor. With small movements, I scrunched my feet under my butt so I could stand. Each vibration set off a chain reaction and I shrieked through clenched teeth. Panting in shallow breaths, I pushed off the floor. A cough rumbled in my chest sending tears down my face. Acrid fluid filled my throat and washed over my tongue. Through a muffled yelp, I spilled the contents of my stomach and gasped for air.
Suck it up, Maggie. Turn the pain to anger. Anger…I feel nothing but anger.

There was nothing around me but rubble. Near the doorway, I saw something crumpled in the dark. It moved across the floor in my invisible hands close enough to see it was a ratty tarp of some kind. Stripping off a piece, I managed to loop the ends together and wrestled with a loose knot. I slipped it over my head and fashioned a sling. Crying through the pain, I tightened it enough to cradle my arm. For a minute, I heard nothing but my heart pushing blood through my head. I threw my head back and exhaled when the pain dropped off a few levels.
Thank god we didn’t rent a stick shift.

Laughter burbled up from somewhere, even though it wasn’t much of a joke. I was happy to be alive and even happier that Mara was dead. Her residual energy floated where she died. The thought of dispersing it, directing it into the filthy water in the harbor, briefly crossed my mind. “No, I want them to find what’s left of her.”

As I cautiously made my way over the rubble, the sensation of being watched drifted over me. My mind connected with the night air, restoring my senses. I allowed it to spread out past the room, throughout the building, and then to the city beyond. The sensation disappeared. There were no Fae nearby, but I did sense people driving toward the building. Two of them.

I wasn’t about to jump back through the open window, so I blew a hole in the wall instead. Hidden under my cloak, I crawled into the silver Toyota and drove past several police cars.

FOURTEEN

SUPERST
ITION

“O
h my god, what happened?” Candace screeched.

“No, don’t touch me…” I wheezed, twisting and stepping back when she reached for me. “My arm, I think it’s broken.”

Her eyes watered and she winced. “Oh my god, sorry. Oh crap, what happened?”

“You asked that already,” I growled.

She waived her hands and slammed them to her sides. “Oh, sorry. Are you alright?”

“Yes. I’m better than Mara,” I wheezed, feeling lightheaded again.

Ronnie slipped behind me, gently placing his hands on my waist and right shoulder. “Damn, girl. If this is better, I’d hate to see what she looks like.”

I laughed and moaned. “Don’t be funny…it hurts.”

“You need to contact Tse-xo-be, have him come here and heal you.”

She glared when I shook my head. “No, they can’t leave my family … don’t want to worry them.”

With her hands on her hips, she pushed her tongue into the side of her cheek, and shook her head. “Uh hmm. Well, then you’re going to the hospital.”

“I can’t…”

She snapped at me, “Maggie, you’re no good to anyone dead.”

Ronnie guided me into the room and past the mirror above a dresser. I gasped when I saw my reflection. Blood seeped from a shallow bite wound on my neck and from a tear in the sleeve of my jacket. Crimson stained the filthy sling. Candace dabbed at my neck with a wet rag, hissing quick gasps through her teeth.

“I need to get my coat off,” I said.

Grimacing, both backed up a few inches when I moved the sling over my head. Everything went black.

* * *

Deep inside a haze, I felt my throbbing arm. It was light, cool, and quiet wherever I was, but I couldn’t open my eyes. A warm sensation coursed through my veins, pushing the pain away. The light seemed to disappear as I slipped off.

* * *

Pain bubbled through the darkness and I felt something rubbing my face. The second time my mind swam to the surface, I fought to stay. There was a voice, garbled and distant, but I definitely heard it. Like being stuck in mental tar, I struggled to focus on the words.

“She’s coming back around.” The voice was feminine.

“Should we call the nurse to give her another shot?” Ronnie whispered.

“No.” I said, forcing an eye open.

The blurry shapes gradually cleared to the point I could make out blonde hair and worried expressions. “Where am I?”

“In a hospital. How’s your pain?” Ronnie asked.

My tongue felt thick. “Manageable.”

“Manageable…” Candace mocked me in a whisper. “Your arm—the humerus—is broken in two places. They’re going to wheel you down to surgery shortly.”

“Did you call Mom?”

“Uh, no, you said not to…I’ll call her if want.”

“No, just checking,” I moaned. “How long have I been out?”

Ronnie glanced at his watch. “Umm, two hours. It’s almost 7:00 a.m.”

My mind cleared a little. The urge to leave grabbed my full attention. “I need something to drink, my mouth is so dry.”

“Ice chip?” Ronnie offered.

“Forget it. I’ll grab a Diet Coke when we get out of here.”

Ronnie frowned. “Get out? Maggie, they need to operate to realign the bones…that plastic cast is temporary.”

I interrupted him. “We have to get out of the city…
they
won’t be far behind. They’ll know Mara’s dead and come after me.”

“Maybe they’ll think she’s missing or something.”

“No, Ronnie, I made a mistake. I didn’t get rid of the evidence—they will know. They’ll trace my scent right here. Are we still in Brooklyn?”

Ronnie and Candace exchanged looks. “What do we need to do?”

“Help me get out of here—where are my clothes?”

“But your arm—it won’t heal until the bones are set.”

“Sara can heal me. We have to get out of here. My clothes?”

Candace nodded. “Cut off, sorry. Ronnie, help her. Follow me.”

My clothes were trashed and my bags were still at the hotel, so I escaped with my butt hanging out of a hospital gown. Hidden from the staff, Ronnie and I wobbled out of the hospital a few feet behind Candace. She hailed a cab, and twenty minutes later I struggled into a pair of jeans and an Arkansas sweatshirt with a sleeve cut out. Candace pulled my hair into a ponytail and helped me with a baseball cap.

“You ready?” she said.

“Not yet.”

I closed my eyes and concentrated. The pain went away the instant I floated above my body. The release was exhilarating as my mind raced to Dersha. She stood in human form with several others in a parking lot. Behind her, emergency vehicles buzzed by and people walked back and forth from a tent. In the distance, smoke drifted over a field where people in hazard suits combed through wreckage. She twisted her head until her cobalt blue eyes reflected the sun.

“The child was not on this plane,” Dersha said, her elegant and angular features as harsh as ever. “You check the next site,” she commanded. “I will locate Mara.”

The Fae around her shifted to Naeshura and moved away.

“What?” Candace asked when I opened my eyes.

“They were at one of the crash sites.”

She smiled. “That’s good, right? That means Mara didn’t tell them where she was going.”

“It doesn’t appear she did.”

“She really was on her own, then. We have some time.”

“There’s bad as well. Dersha knows Mara is missing.”

Candace’s face went slack, and then she mumbled, “We need to leave.”

“Yes, but I haven’t figured out how. Are the airports still closed?”

Her mouth pulled to the side in a half smile. “Yes, they are, but we have that covered.”

“How?”

“A boat, just like Ronnie suggested. Big boat.” She grinned at me, stuffing the last few odds and ends into my bags.

“Seriously?”

“The Queen Mary 2 leaves for Southampton, England, next week…”

I interrupted. “We can’t wait that long.”

She frowned, “…I know that now, but let me finish…we didn’t know how long we’d have, so we checked a few more options. There is a ship leaving in a few hours. It’s going to Southampton as well—sorry, there’s nothing going directly to Ireland.”

“Okay, great, so why the long face?”

She grimaced. “It’s a freighter.”

“A freighter?”

“Yeah, a German cargo ship.”

“Are we going to stow-away?”

“No, it’s not like that. They had two rooms. Ronnie reserved them already.”

The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. I’d never heard of hitching a ride on a cargo vessel. Maybe the Fae wouldn’t think to check.

“Sold.” I said. “But please don’t tell me he used a credit card…they might track—”

She held her and up and cut me off. “Well, he did, but he played the odds. He dug through all of those fake ID’s Gavin gave us and reserved rooms on several ships. He got us seats on trains, flights, buses, anything he could find to make sure. He figured if the Fae learned any of the identities we were using, he’d keep them busy searching.”

I laughed. “How many reservations did he make?”

“I lost count at thirty, but he was busy the entire time you were out.”

“Wow, that’s actually pretty smart. Brilliant even.”

She rolled her eyes and frowned. “Yeah, I know, but don’t tell him I said so. He’ll be impossible to live with.”

* * *

By eight that evening, we were miles from the east coast. There were twenty-one members of the crew—several Germans, Filipinos, a few Norwegians, and two Russians. They seemed friendly enough. In fact, Candace was an immediate hit, and despite the bulky plastic cast and the bandage on my neck, so was I. There was a small library that contained a few books in English and several movies—including some of the adult variety. Besides the mess hall, a sauna, and a small cabin with an exercise bike and some weights, there were containers. Hundreds, maybe thousands of metal containers, stacked in neat rows, covered the enormous deck on the front of the ship. It definitely wasn’t the Queen Mary, but it was headed away from danger. I just hoped in the eight days it took us to get to England, Dersha wouldn’t find us.

The captain, a handsome German man in his fifties, showed us the bridge, and in a thick accent, explained navigation to Ronnie. I tried to listen, but the pain medication had worn off, and due to my hasty exit at the hospital, I didn’t have any more. My arm throbbed and the pain was getting worse, so I left Candace and Ronnie on the bridge.

Grateful the sea was smooth, I climbed down to flights of stairs to the deck where my cabin was located. The room was small, but clean. More than anything else, it was quiet. Through a small window, there was a view of the moonlit ocean off the starboard side.

The pain gradually increased and I felt feverish. Sleep seemed impossible at that moment, but projecting brought immediate, delicious relief. Pain registered in my mind, but rather than an actual sensation, it felt more like an idea that I simply acknowledged. The instant my mind cleared, I decided to spend as much time away from my body as possible.

Gavin paced a dark hardwood floor behind a sofa with pale blue and yellow stripes. It was early evening in Arkansas, and soft warm light angled across the room a few feet away. His pace slowed and a half smile deepened the dimple on the right side of his face.

“It’s about time.”

I concentrated on the words, “
Sorry I’m late.
”

His biceps flexed when he crossed his arms, stretching the sleeves of a pale blue polo. “You’re all right then?”

“
Yes. Fine.
”

Like a human, he exhaled slowly and closed his eyes. “I was afraid you might have tried to fly.”

“
We did. Landed safe.
”

He shook his head and the muscles in his square jaw tensed. “Then you were lucky. Six airliners went down…no one survived. I told your mom you weren’t foolish enough to take to the air. That comforted her, but somehow I should have known better.”

Six? It was worse than I thought. I focused on the words, “
It was Mara
.”

Gavin walked to the widow and put his palms on the top of the frame. The orange sun lit the amber flecks in his chocolate eyes and dust motes floated between us. “We suspected as much. Tell me the truth—has she tracked you yet?”

“
She’s dead.
”

Gavin exhaled again, then dropped his chin slightly. “Where are you?”

“
Atlantic. Container ship.
”

I watched him laugh lightly as he processed the information. He liked the idea, too.

“
Is my family safe?
”

He nodded. “We’re in Fayetteville. Danny has us in a house about two blocks from Wilson Park—you remember where that is, right? They’re settling in as well as can be expected—they’ll be a lot better when I tell them you’re safe.”

He turned his head toward where I floated. “Okay, you’re safe, but how are you doing?”

“
Lonely. Talk, please.
”

Gavin’s face relaxed into the most beautiful smile, the big smile he reserved for special moments. For a few seconds, I couldn’t believe I’d actually left him. He shared stories about ancient Greece, of colorful characters he met when Athens was at the height of its power, each word pulling me into a comfortable place. With his soothing voice and easy laugh, Gavin reminded me why I loved him: from thousands of miles away, he made me forget about everything wrong in the world.

* * *

After two days onboard, I was in a living hell and we still had six days to go. I’d never imagined it possible to feel so much agony. I hadn’t climbed out of bed for twenty-four hours. When I didn’t answer their knock at the door, Candace and Ronnie got a member of the crew to let them in.

“Maggie, what’s wrong?”

“I’m all right…” is what I tried to say. Garbled muck came out of my mouth.

Candace bolted to my side and put her hand on my forehead. “Oh my gosh, you’re on fire.”

I just managed to open my eyes, but couldn’t focus on her.

“Has she changed her bandages?” Ronnie asked.

“She said she has…I’m going to take a look, alright, Mags. I’ll be gentle.”

Terrified of the pain removing the dressing would cause, I tried to say “no,” but once again only a garbled moan escaped my lips.

Candace ignored me and began loosening the plastic case around my arm. Her eyes watered and she gagged when she gently removed the bandage on my forearm where Mara had driven her claws to the bone.

“It’s infected and oozing. Maggie, it’s so bad.”

She dabbed as gently as she could, but the contact registered in my mind as though she was twisting my arm off in a giant pincer. Their voices became more distant as I struggle to escape the pain and project. I slipped into darkness instead.